What we're looking at
Sen. Jon Kyl said abortion accounts for 98 percent of Planned Parenthood's services to pregnant women.

The comment
"Last week on the Senate floor, I incorrectly stated that well over 90 percent of what Planned Parenthood does is perform abortions. I was referring to a statistic that I had read in a report by the Chiaroscuro Foundation, but I later found that I had incorrectly cited the report. It said that '98 percent of Planned Parenthood's services to pregnant women (abortion, adoption and prenatal care) are abortion.' That statistic was also cited by a former director of a Planned Parenthood clinic in a recent column."

The forum
E-mailed statement on April 14, 2011, to The Arizona Republic.

Analysis
Federal law prohibits the use of federal funds to pay for abortions, but money does go to Planned Parenthood, which describes itself as "the nation's leading sexual and reproductive health-care provider and advocate," for other purposes.

That funding became a big issue in the April 2011 federal budget negotiations, when Title X money was included in a list of programs recommended for elimination to save money. The Title X program, created by Congress in 1970, is the only federal grant program dedicated exclusively to providing people with comprehensive family-planning and related preventive-health services, according to a 2008 report from the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service. Priority is given to low-income individuals.

Title X stipulates that grant money cannot be used in "programs where abortion is a method of family planning," but recipients may provide abortion services, as long as those activities are kept "separate and distinct" from activities funded by Title X.

Planned Parenthood, an organization that offers sexual and reproductive care and information services at more than 800 health centers, some of which provide abortions, is a key Title X beneficiary.

Kyl garnered much unfavorable publicity after saying on the Senate floor that abortions account for more than 90 percent of what Planned Parenthood does. The actual number is 3 percent, according to Planned Parenthood, and Kyl concedes that he misspoke.

But the 98 percent figure Kyl cites from the non-profit, anti-abortion Chiaroscuro Foundation (also used in a column by abortion-rights critic Abby Johnson in the Washington, D.C., newspaper The Hill) also is disputed by Planned Parenthood.

The Chiaroscuro report cites Planned Parenthood's 2009 statistics of 332,278 abortions, 7,021 prenatal-care clients and 977 adoption referrals to other agencies. While abortions do make up 98 percent of those listed services for that year, Planned Parenthood says it's wrong to assume that those are the only services that pregnant women seek from the organization.

"This is a meaningless and unverifiable statistic since Planned Parenthood does not collect information on the pregnancy status of every female patient who comes to our health centers," Stuart Schear, Planned Parenthood Federation of America's vice president for communications, said in an e-mailed statement to AZ Fact Check. "In addition, Planned Parenthood does not collect data on how many pregnant women we refer to ob-gyns or other health-care providers. You cannot calculate an accurate percentage, if you do not know the total number, and this statistic is meaningless. This assertion is just another misleading and inaccurate attack on the health care Planned Parenthood provides to millions of women."

Bottom line: AZ Fact Check agrees that the Chiaroscuro Foundation report cited by Kyl makes an assumption that is not backed up in its footnotes.

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AZ Fact Check is a service of The Arizona Republic, 12 News and the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University. It is not affiliated with www.FactCheck.org, a project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania.